Mergers & Acquisitions, Drugmaker | featured news

Germany drug company Bayer AG says it intends to buy California-based Conceptus to expand its birth control offerings. Bayer said Monday it would launch a pupublicblic offer to pay $31.00 per share for all the stock in Conceptus, Inc. That means Bayer would pay $1.1 billion. Conceptus makes Essure, an irreversible birth control method in which metal and polyester coils are inserted to block a woman's fallopian tubes. The procedure can be done in 10 minutes a doctor's office.

Pfizer Inc, the world's biggest drugmaker, has agreed to buy King Pharmaceuticals Inc for $3.6 billion, expanding its presence in the market for pain drugs.

Pfizer Inc.'s $68 billion purchase of Wyeth will close Thursday after antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Canada cleared the deal, which will make Pfizer the world's largest drugmaker by revenue.

Belgian drugs, chemicals and plastics maker Solvay said on Monday it would sell its drugs unit to U.S. partner Abbott Laboratories for 4.5 billion euros ($6.61 billion) in cash and reinvest in chemicals and plastics.

J&J agreed to buy an 18.4% stake in Elan for $1 billion and acquire the rights to much of the Irish biotech company's research into drugs for Alzheimer's disease.

Drugmakers Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. are planning to merge under the name Merck in a stock-and-cash deal worth about $41.1 billion.